“No, it was love,” Eli said.
Oskar said nothing.
Cruz paced into the room. “She went home to India today,” he lied. “Next week she’ll have a new lover. Probably a young man with a hard body who drives a Porsche and will inherit his father’s fortune.”
“Still, I know her. It was love.”
Cruz shrugged. Leave it at that, then. It was love. He took a step forward and shot Howard in the forehead with the Magnum. In the second before Cruz pulled the trigger, Howard squinted and cringed, but made no other move. The shot made very little sound, but the man’s head came apart with an audible crack. Brains and bone flew. A mirror against the wall twenty feet behind him smashed into a dozen large pieces.
Eli’s eyes went very wide.
“It’s in your interest to tell us some things,” Oskar said.
Eli talked a lot. It seemed he had a lot to say. One thing he described was the safe’s location and the combination. Then he opened it for them. At the end of it all, Oskar finished him with a gently laid bullet to the forehead. It was almost a blessed relief, by the look on Eli’s face.
Oskar went about pulling some things from the safe. First, he laid his gun down. He opened a pouch and placed the diamond inside it. It was quite a thing to behold, that diamond. Then it disappeared into the bag.
Cruz stood behind and about ten feet away from his teacher.
They had each gotten their own dossiers for this operation. Oskar’s had included descriptions of Eli, Howard, the girlfriend, and the diamond, as well as the layout of the house. Cruz’s dossier had included all these things and one more: a description of Oskar and his upcoming retirement.
“Oskar,” Cruz called.
“Yes, yes, one moment.”
“Oskar, you need to turn around.”
Something in Cruz’s voice made Oskar stop what he was doing. He stood very still for a moment, no longer looking at whatever paperwork he held in his gloved hand. Then his back slumped. It had to be a disappointment for things to end in this way.
“It’s like that then, is it?”
“It is.” Cruz felt something well up in his eye. He brushed it away, whatever it was or might be.
Oskar turned around slowly. He gazed wistfully at his Ruger, just out of reach on the table. He made no move toward it.
“You got your two hundred,” Cruz said.
“Yes, I did. Somehow, it no longer tastes very sweet.”
“You were the best,” Cruz said.
“A cold comfort, I’m afraid.”
The two friends stared at each other for a long moment. “A final lesson, if you haven’t moved beyond learning,” Oskar said.
Cruz shook his head. Of course there was time for one last word from the teacher. If only time could stop in this moment. “I haven’t.”
“Avoid the mistakes I’ve made. For one, never try to retire. I gather now that it cannot be done. For two, never flatter yourself into believing you are not expendable. You are. And three, never turn your back on a young man in your charge. Especially one with great potential. Especially one that you loved like a son.”
Cruz nodded.
“End of lesson,” Oskar said.
Cruz shot him four times. The first bullet entered his brain and killed him. Without pain, Cruz hoped. The next three were insurance.
Years before, the first lesson, delivered in Oskar’s clipped no nonsense tone, had gone as follows: when you kill a man, make sure he is dead.
They didn’t call him Fingers just because he was missing some.
One of the things he prided himself on was being able to steal just about any American-made, late model sedan in less than two minutes.
They were in a small seafood restaurant along the waterfront. Nets and lobster traps hung from the ceiling. A huge old steering wheel was mounted on one wall. An ancient anchor stood upright, mounted on a pedestal when you walked in. Fingers had already finished a platter of fried fish, French fries and cole slaw, and Moss was still demolishing the bread bowl that some New England clam chowder had come in.
In a little while, they would head out to the airport and Fingers would pick up a work car out of the long-term parking lot. The Mercedes wasn’t for work – it was for maximum comfort while driving up here. For work, they needed something nondescript, with local plates, maybe five years old but with a good solid engine. Something with a little bit of go power. The body had to be good, no rust, but the paint a little faded, a real middle-class blubber boat. Left there by some hard-working citizen who had parked his car and flown out to see his sister in Ohio for two weeks.
Fingers looked forward to it. In fact, he could hardly sit still. He loved these missions, and no doubt he liked to whack people. But one of his favorite things, although he would never tell a guy like Moss, was stealing cars. Moss would probably relegate grabbing a car to the scrap heap of STUFF THAT HAD TO GET DONE, like reading your dossier, like ditching evidence, like getting to the fucking airport on time. Not Fingers. He loved it when he had to take a car – it was what he had come up doing as a kid – and he liked to show his stuff. At one time, he had practically lived for it. That feeling of moving low and fast, his sneakers barely touching the concrete, his eyes darting, sizing up the cars on the fly. This one? A blue 1995 Oldsmobile Achieva?
Nah.
This one? Yeah, that’s the one. A green 1999 Chevy Impala.
Yeah.
After he snatched them a car, he and Moss would see about this wetback who cleaned Dugan’s apartment. Put her through her paces. For now, however, it was dinner time. And dinner time was downtime.
“I tell you what,” Roland Moss said in a long, lazy drawl.
Fingers sat across the table from Moss and waited for the rest of his statement. It could be a while before the big man decided to finish it. If there was one thing Fingers knew about Moss after the last couple of jobs he had pulled with him, it was that Moss always talked slow.
He did everything slow. It wasn’t that he couldn’t move fast – he could. Fingers had seen him move with sudden lightning speed. It was almost as if Moss did everything slow on purpose, to allow people to let down their guard.
Fingers watched him destroy the bread bowl, slowly, deliberately tearing its remains apart, and putting them in his mouth. Here was a big lumbering creature of a man. Everything about him said SLOW. He even talked slow – sometimes pausing for what seemed like a very long time between words and even syllables. He claimed that he talked slow so that everyone – even the simplest of simpletons – would understand.
And his sheer size and the crazy mayhem in his eyes meant that his patience was rarely tested. Clerks were terrified of him. His two monstrous hands on the counter, the epic bulk of his shoulders and upper body leaning forward, his body relaxed but the brow of his forehead creased with mild annoyance…
“Son,” he might drawl, letting that word linger, the time stretching out between himself and the startled mouse of a desk clerk below him, “I hope you’re gonna go on and do what I ask.”
This was enough. This was more than enough.
Fingers had seen it happen. Times when he, Fingers, would practically have to throw a tantrum to get what he wanted – and he was a hired killer, for Christ’s sake – Moss merely had to clench his jaw in disapproval.
Six months ago, Fingers had watched Moss break a man’s neck with the same bland expression on his face that he wore right now while eating his dinner. It was a mixture of boredom and detached concentration.
Moss chewed the bread with near infinite care. “The thing is,” he said, his impassive eyes roaming the restaurant, soaking in the other early dinner patrons. “I’m not sure I like that boy.” He nodded, as if in agreement with himself. “It’s his attitude. Rubs me the wrong way.”
